Linux – Will the Linux ( red-hat ) Open VPNC Client connect to checkpoint or nortel VPN gateways

ciscolinuxopenvpnvpn

Site: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/vpn/linux-solaris/index.xml?ID=VPNC

What is open VPNC:

VPNC is an open-source VPN client for Linux and other Unix systems which is compatible with the OUCS VPN Service and which offers some advantages over the ‘official’ Cisco VPN client for Linux

My question:

So VPNC will connect to Cisco VPN gateways.
But will it connect to Checkpoint's or Nortel's gateways as well?

IF NOT:

then please advice if there are some other tools like OPEN VPNC that can service checkpoint or Nortel VPNs ?

Best Answer

I cannot say if VPNC will or won't work with Checkpoint, and in the past when I've attempted to use VPNC with Aventail/Nortel it did not work for me, so I reverted to using the native client software that was included by Aventail/Nortel on Fedora/CentOS/Ubuntu systems. I cover some of this at a highlevel on my blog in this article titled: Setting up Aventail VPN Software on Linux (Fedora/CentOS/RHEL).

Checkpoint

With respect to Checkpoint, if you go to this URL you'll notice that they provide a Linux version of their SNX software which I believe you could use instead of VPNC.

SSL Network Extender (SNX) R71

Specifically towards the bottom of that page are these 2 links:

Other resources

This serverfault Q&A titled: Checkpoint VPN Linux Client also had additional links to Checkpoint VPN client options. Several answers mention a client called Shrew which is claimed to be able to connect to Checkpoint as well.

Related Solutions

Networking VPN – Is It Possible to Run Two VPN Clients Simultaneously?

Of course you can run both at the same time. IIRC t is also possible to connect to a cisco concentrator using vpnc, as long as it has ipsec support. What will happen when you do both we can't tell. That depends on the VPN configurations, which may be pushed to your computer from the remote end.

To get what you want you probably have to manually configure your routing table to make sure only the correct traffic goes into the correct endpoint. There is no generic answer to this question though.

Linux – How to open VPN connection inside other VPN connection under Linux/Ubuntu

As long as the VPN servers do not use the same IPs internally, it should possible - but probably not by using only one wrapper like NetworkManager. You need to start at least one VPN client by hand or by using others tools like kvpnc.

Depending on what you want, you need to be careful with the routes. You need to get sure, that the routes which are set by the second vpn client do not replace the direct access to the first vpn server. You may need to set explicit routing options before you start the second vpn client by calling:

ip route add IP_OF_FIRST_VPN_SERVER dev WAN-INTERFACE
ip route add IP_OF_SECOND_VPN_SERVER dev FIRST-VPN-INTERFACE

(replace the words in capitals by the corresponding values. Your WAN interface is probably eth0 or wlan0, the vpn interface could be e.g. ppp0).

Additionally, the two vpn clients need to use separate interfaces (which should be normally the case).